I'm still against the Harddrive overall. It gives developers a chance to be lazy and release games that need patches. It hasn't happened yet, but I'm betting it will when the online network is set up.

Harddrives fail too easy. I speak from experience lately. Maxtor has burned me twice in six months. I like keeping my game systems for a long time. My 3DO is seven years old and still works great. I doubt the Xbox will last half this long before the HD fails.

I like the way Nintendo reduced load times by shrinking the size of the discs. I really don't think gave saves need to be more than 8 MB either. Developers can work around this, but with flash memory dropping in price they could easily make a 16 or 32 MB card that is still affordable.

I also don't like the idea of a game system the size and weight of an Xbox. I don't want to lug something that size around with me. The Game Cube and PSone are the right size for a game system.

Just my opinion, but I hope hard drives never become standard on a game system.

See, I would disagree. yes, there are bad harddrives out there. It happens with every product. But my old 486 PC which my niece has, is now 7 years old, and the seagate HD in that sucker is still going strong, and has never failed. It varies, ya know?

As far as the Xbox lasting for only a short period of time before it breaks, that's almost laughable. I mean really, there is no sense to a company putting out an item that is going to break or fail in a short period of time, because it would spell the death of that company to a consumer, and Microsoft is much smarter than this. This is why they dumped a ton of money into R&D for this system- to make it last. Plain and simple. They want this system to have the longest lifespan possible, because it equals more dollars for them in the long run. It's basic marketing and manufacturing. Sure, there are going to be a few problems here and there, but really, name a product that hasn't had one. The original Playstations burned out in like 4 hours of gameplay because of overheating without a harddrive- Stuff happens, nothing is perfect. Geez, let's be a little realistic about this guys...

I am being realistic. I have had three computers less than a year old have hard drive failures in six months. Two Maxtors and one Western Digital. Hopefully the Seagate is better. However, even if the Harddrive lasts forever in the Xbox I'm still against it for the other reasons listed. I just think a harddrive will add to the odds of a system failing after the warranty has expired and finding a replacement harddrive of the same size may be difficult because the technology moves so fast. Like I said its just my opinion, but I would think you should at least be able to back up your saves to a memory card. Maybe in the future they will let you back up your saves on to the internet like with the Dreamcast.

Uh....FIRESTONE TIRES ON FORD EXPLORERS?????

Exploding FORD PINTOS???

WINDOWS?

As with all things with electronics or mechanical parts: "Your mileage may vary."

Totally different type of manufacturing situation...even though I know you were being funny, as I laughed...The Firestone situation is a company knowingly putting out a faulty product, and knowingly continuing to produce said product. I'm just talking about normal manufacturing situations here, and as was said above, YMMV. I had a bad Playstation...I exchanged it. No biggie. To this day I still have one sitting here, and harbor no bad feelings at sony about it...

This is entirely possible I guess, but we have to remember MS is spending close to $500 million dollars to prove the Xbox isn't a PC. This includes no patches. They have been very adament with us developers so far to stress that point. There is a reason we have a 200+ point checklist we have to pass to have a title certified on Xbox, and the reason it grows monthly.

I understand the points raised in concern about the HD. They are certainly valid to some extent or another, but I still think the HD is here to stay in the console arena. The benefits out weigh the risks.

-Naan

Why do we want developers to "work around" limitations of a system when by putting in a hard drive we eliminate those limitations?

Or maybe we should go back to Atari because those cartridges lasted longer than CD's/DVD's. You didn't have to worry about scratching them. Sure you had to clean the dust every once in a while but how difficult is that. Better yet let's get rid of all video games and go back to a good ol' deck of cards. They are way less defective decks of cards than Gamecube's so they are better right?

I own an X-Box so I may be somewhat biased, but I think the HD is one of the best features and it is obviously not even used to its fullest potential yet. Exchanging saved games by linking two systems would be a nice feature but so is not having to buy a ton of extra memory cards to save games.

I can't argue with a statement that logical.